The subject matter disclosed herein relates to vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft and, more particularly, to a VTOL aircraft with a delta-wing shaped fuselage and swept back wings.
A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can fly horizontally and one that can hover, take off, and land vertically. This classification includes fixed-wing aircraft as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, such as cyclogyros/cyclocopters and tiltrotors. Some VTOL aircraft can operate in other modes as well, such as conventional take-off and landing (CTOL), short take-off and landing (STOL) and short take-off and vertical landing STOVL). Others, such as some helicopters, can only operate by VTOL, due to the aircraft lacking landing gear that can handle horizontal motion.
An ongoing issue with VTOL aircraft is that they can be well suited for vertical flight operations but less well suited for horizontal flight or well suited for horizontal flight but unstable during vertical flight operations. That is, the design of VTOL aircraft generally represent a tradeoff between achieving certain design considerations for vertical flight while sacrificing some for horizontal flight and vice versa.